"Let me explain," said the doctor. "There is a youth outside waiting to see me. He will come into this room when you are gone. He will sit in that chair you now occupy. He will look at me appealingly for that which I cannot give him. He wishes to live. He is doomed to die. His fight will be over in a year-two years at the most. He is a pauper, and he is a genius."

"A pauper, and comes to see you?" There was a taunt in the magnate's voice. "Yes. He has been a student in the university, where he has been working his way through by odd jobs-odd in more senses than one. He too has been burning the candle at both ends. His mind is like a divine flame, but his body is poor

The instructor showed me a play the boy had written, and in my moments of relaxation I have read the play. I used to take an active interest in such things, and I can affirm-with his instructor-that the play is a masterpiece, a piece destined to win immortality. Unfortunately, the author will not live to enjoy his fame; he'll probably never see his play produced."

"Very well," said Hawking, "but what's that got to do with me?"

The doctor fixed his gaze upon space and his eyes were kindled again with the strange, almost malign, light which had come into them a moment earlier. "You might buy this play," he said. "Buy it?"

"And affix your name to it, and have it

produced. It would be an interesting experiment for you. It would bring you into contact with a group of persons who know nothing of oil and transportationbut who know other things. It would divert you. It might prove to be the very thing you need."

"Yes, and have the instructor-you mentioned an instructor-come forward at the psychological moment, as he would call it, and proclaim the real author's name and denounce me as an impostor." "The instructor, I regret to say, was the victim of an automobile accident only a week ago. You may have read of it in the newspapers-a tragic case. He was killed instantly."

"But there must be others who know of this-this immortal masterpiece."

"No. The youth has made a profound secret of his great work, producing it, quite appropriately, in a garret, burning what is known as midnight oil. It is not identical with the oil of commerce."

Hawking's face became a study. He had been trained in a school wherein men take what they want, without caring too much about means and methods, so long as the corporation lawyer set up no difficulties. He did not know himself as an unscrupulous man, but only as a successful man. "And you think it could be arranged?" he asked. In his heart he had long deplored the fact that he was known only as a man of money and of the money world, never as a figure of moment in the great and vague other world which hummed about him.

"By discreet management-yes. Let us see."

The doctor went to that anteroom door and opened it. An instant later he stepped back to make way for a youth who timorously entered the room.

So for the first time they confronted each other-the man who thought in terms of metal and dividends, the youth who thought in terms of lofty images. Of the two, the youth was by far the more sadly in need of a physician's care. He was a mere wraith of a human being, a pallid-faced creature with stooped, narrow shoulders, and dishevelled hair which swept away from eyes that were as the vent for an agitated flame.

"Sit down," said the doctor softly, in

dicating a chair.

The youth found the chair with hand, as if he could not trust his visi seeing eyes, and slipped into it wit sigh.

"What ails the young man?" aske financier, his lips a little pursed, his rasping, his eyes passing from a sw careless scrutiny of the youth doctor.

The doctor smiled with an condescending patience. He' surely, philosophically: "We ways know precisely what ai women. It was a stupid naming of diseases. The . . . it is like a cup, hold amount of life. It is full, it is empty. An empty cup occasionally, but there's for refilling it. We phy drug and that—and we t smile deepened. "This continued, "has used certain kind of life. Hi to discover that he has life. Can he discover to discover it? That i

"But you saidsharply; and Endic a cautioning hand.

"We have made doctor to Wentw steadily failing a miracle can save gentleman here bringing this mi The youth upon the mag famous man's antagonized h with a gestur ing, compres antipathy, t "I have it addressing get away very well You obey the slave classroon bated n new wa travel t atmo be

don't know. I suppose the making of vast fortunes is the most dramatic phenomenon in our American life-and in that sense Hawking certainly has been identified with great dramatic moments. I don't know what his early career wasand when you lack that information it's never safe to say what a man is."

"Of course it doesn't matter to me whether he wrote it or simply bought it," said Delando. He turned the manuscript over in his hands with a curious air. "This copy," he said, "hasn't been done by a writer. It has all the earmarks of a commercial typist: expensive paper, and the rigid uniformity of an expert who writes without emotional ups and downs; a crude mistake in spelling here and there, and no patient and labored alterations. Hawking has perhaps had the original copied in his office-as a method of keeping the author's name safely hid. But all that's none of our affair. No matter how he acquired it, it's no doubt his own property now."

That, certainly, states the case in full," said Holland.

Delando sat a moment later in a manner of pregnant repose; then suddenly he assumed a brisk, practical air. "Of course," he said, "it will have to be taken all apart and put together again."

Holland knew much about the manner in which plays are produced-how, often, they are actually evolved in the hands of a stage-manager and during the processes of rehearsal. He waited undisturbed for the uncanny mind of Delando to reveal itself further.

"It will want a different title, certainly -something to attract attention. 'The Republic' would be a fatal handicap. A phrase describing the character of this woman Olympias, a tiger-cat if there ever was one. Ah-there we have the real title: 'The Tiger-Cat." "

Holland nodded, musing, beginning to smile.

Delando abruptly demanded: "Where do you suppose a man like Hawkingsupposing that he wrote this thing got all these names-the people in the story -with that sort of Biblical flavor?"

"A classical flavor," amended the playbroker.

"It's all the same. We must change the names. And you can see the author

had no idea of the proper business to get his situations over. He's provided little more than just a skeleton. But holy smoke-what a skeleton! It can be given a modern setting-the whole thing translated into terms of modern life. It ought to knock 'em cold!" He fell upon the manuscript again, turning the sheets eagerly.

"His idea-Hawking's-I forgot to mention it before, is to have the thing produced anonymously, in a manner, and have the press-agents circulate the secret everywhere that it is his. He asked me if that could be managed, and I said it could-that I thought it might be a very good idea. His part would be neither to deny nor affirm that he had written the play, but to smile mysteriously when the question was raised."

"That would be good business," said Delando decisively. "And he'd agreeHawking-to our whipping the thing into shape? Do you suppose he'd do that?"

"I think so. He seems curiously cold about the affair; he admits frankly that he wants to go into it as a diversion. He's had a breakdown of some sort, and his physician has prescribed the usual thing: diversion, getting away from his job-that sort of thing. I don't believe he'd bother you when it came to details. No, my idea is that you could handle him easily enough."

III

"THE TIGER-CAT" was produced on Broadway in November. A stupendous production had been made; it was widely heralded that a fortune had been expended alone upon the scenic investiture. The most famous builders and painters known to modern stage-craft had been employed and had achieved new heights of magnificence.

A woman hitherto unknown to the stage, but of commanding beauty and social eminence, the central figure in the latest divorce suit of international interest, had been persuaded to create the title-rôle. It was whispered-by means of every newspaper in town-that one of the gowns she would wear represented the last word in audacity and cunning.

A ballet of girls averaging sixteen years of age-a score in number-had been